This invention relates to a process for making laminated sheet materials, and to specific laminate materials made by such a process which have been found to be particularly useful in making molded, one-piece, non-stitched bra cups.
At present, the bra cup portion of brassieres, as they are currently manufactured, are made in a multi-step process that requires, among other things, that two or more pieces of laminated fabric be separately molded, sewn together to form a completed bra cup, and then integrated into a finished brassiere. Such a manufacturing technique involves a considerable amount of manual sewing and cutting by skilled personnel; it requires the purchase and use of expensive equipment such as sewing machines; and it requires excessive handling of individual piece goods as they are cut and fabricated into a finished bra cup. Perhaps even more importantly, however, the repeated cutting and sewing required to fabricate bra cups from separate half pieces greatly increases the opportunity for manufacturing error, by introduction of the human variable of sewing, and often times results in poorly fitting bra cups that must be altered through adjustment of straps and accessories. In addition, the seams which appear across the center portion of bra cups made by such currently used brassiere manufacturing techniques are less comfortable for wearers, less aesthetically pleasing because the seams tend to show through some blouses and sweaters as ridges, and thus, far less useful for a variety of fashion end uses than one-piece molded bra cups.
A one-piece molded bra cup, therefore, would not only eliminate many of the comfort and aesthetic problems for wearers, but would greatly reduce brassiere manufacturing costs by eliminating both the need for additional manufacturing personnel to cut and sew separate half-pieces of fabric together and the need for additional sewing and cutting equipment to carry out the bra cup manufacture. As a consequence of the many advantages which result from the use of a one-piece molded bra cup (instead of the conventional two-piece approach), considerable interest has developed in the manufacture of laminate materials which are capable of being efficiently and effectively molded into a one-piece bra cup. Although processes have been attempted to manufacture laminate materials suitable for one-piece molding, none has proved entirely successful. In part, this has happened because of the inability of the resulting laminate materials to meet the very stringent commercial requirements for bra cups, such as permanence of form, washability, strength, durability, softness, flexibility, smoothness of inner surfaces, and perhaps most importantly, the absence of wrinkling, fabric slippage and decorative pattern distortion.
The laminate materials of the present invention, made by the process of the present invention, have overcome the various problems associated with prior art laminate compositions, and, as a consequence, are particularly well suited for use in making molded one-piece bra cups that can meet the strigent commercial criteria for bra cups and brassieres.